Using Reason to Determine Conspiracy
By Dean Hartwell
Calling an event the work of a conspiracy is a very serious charge and should only be made with strong relevant evidence. Naturally, if conspirators were at work, they likely covered their tracks and helped to promote an official story that dismisses any talk that people at high levels of the government acted.
Anyone who studies conspiracy theories should distinguish between what type of evidence would, if true, be necessary to establish a conspiracy and what makes an event look like one. For example, the debate within some of the community of those who disagree with the official 9/11 theory still focuses upon whether a missile or a plane hit the Pentagon. They can argue all they want because it does not matter: a conspiracy could have happened either way.
Establishing a conspiracy involves finding reliable evidence that agents of the government acted contrary to the law or prevented others in the government from doing their jobs properly. So, going back to 9/11, it is much better evidence of conspiracy when we learn that the government planned military war game exercises involving airplanes on 9/11. The evidence becomes more solid when it turns out that our government knew, through foreign sources, that attacks were planned by terrorists using airplanes that same day and time! And the evidence goes on, as I point out in "Indictment of Conspiracy."
To determine whether the evidence is necessary to form a conspiracy, one could ask whether the ending of the event would have been different without the government act. With the above example, the Federal Aviation Administration and other government agencies would not have confused the real planes from the exercise planes on their computer screens. Without this confusion, one could safely say that the planes would have been identified sooner by those who had the power to intercept and even shoot them down. Things would have ended up much differently!
If we discerned the best evidence the way that a prosecutor decides on what evidence to go with at trial, we can present conspiracy theories that cannot and will not be ignored or ridiculed by reasonable people. Prosecutors pick witnesses with the best first-hand knowledge of the most important events that relate to the elements of the crime charged. So, while it might be interesting to know that a friend of the defendant up for assault has a temper, it is more important to note that a bystander observed the defendant carrying a baseball bat up the steps to the victim's apartment. Having a temper is not an element for assault, but intent to harm the victim is. And even though the walk toward the victim's apartment is not intent by itself, it does give us a better understanding of what happened.
Some conspiracy theories spend time on issues like the alleged missile at the Pentagon or the accusation of temperament by someone. With 9/11, we have other issues that are not necessary to prove a conspiracy: the charge that all of the cell phone calls on the 9/11 airplanes were fake, the belief that Flight 93 really ended up in Cleveland rather than Shanker, Pennsylvania and even the premise that controlled demolitions brought down the Twin Towers, etc. Whether these kinds of issues, which are not needed to establish conspiracy, are true is beyond the point. The greatest amount of time in promoting the theory that the government acted on 9/11 should go to the actions that agents of the government had to commit in order to create the result.
That way, the opponents of conspiracy theories won't take an issue like the fake cell phone calls and make it sound like that is what we base our entire theories upon. It would be much better to discuss the most important issues together. Then the cynics will have no other choice but to consider reason.